1. In January, I was utterly obsessed with Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" (I still am, actually), and one of the things that really amazed me was how familiar it was; it had influenced so much of the music I'd already been listening to, and so it made a lot of intuitive sense to me.

Yesterday, Pitchfork reviewed a Can Anthology, and I remembered that Can is a band I've been meaning to listen to for years and never got around to it. I looked them up on iTunes and was trying to figure out whether I should get the anthology or one of the actual albums, and I decided to call my boy Mike and ask his opinion. He promptly hooked me up with Ege Bamyasi, and HOLY SHIT it's like January all over again. "Sing Swan Song" is the Radiohead song they never wrote; the very end of "Pinch" sounds almost exactly like a Phish jam (at the very least, it's obvious to me that Phish's drummer spent a lot of time listening to Can's drummer); and the whole album sounds a lot like what Miles Davis was doing at around the same time, although coming from a completely different direction. I'm definitely going to be looking for Tago Mago and Future Days very shortly.

2. My stomach isn't feeling all that great today, but what else is new.

4. I'm happy with Joe Girardi as Yankee manager; actually, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that he is the right manager for the team, not just the best of 3 candidates. He's already earned his pinstripes; he's a former catcher, so he already has an intuitive sense about how to deal with young pitchers; I think he'll handle the media pretty well. It'll be sad to see Mattingly go, of course, but baseball is not about your feelings. In related news, this might be the dumbest thing I've ever read about the managerial situation.

EDIT5. I knew I was missing something! kellianne has a great iPod meme going. I did it over there, but I'm doing it again here, just to see what happens.